The pilot project in Ghana involves analyzing and allocating space for economic activities, ecosystem services and conservation values in Ghana’s maritime area, to achieve the economic objectives set by the Republic of Ghana’s medium term economic policy.

The project’s overall goal is to contribute to sustainable economic growth by ensuring an integrated management of Ghana’s coastal and marine environment. This is being done by strengthening national capacity for ecosystem-based management of the marine and coastal environment by preparing a state of the marine environment report, as well as by developing a marine spatial plan for the country’s territory waters. In addition, a transboundary objective entails collaboration with Ghana’s neighbor to the West, Côte d’Ivoire, in a process that could be replicated around the continent.

Components / Outcomes

• Institutional capacity strengthening: training of technical teams to undertake marine environment assessment and spatial planning. This will also include the development of regulations to control activities within the maritime use zones, and development of associated management plans and knowledge management.
• Marine Environment Assessment: establishment of a technical team in order to develop action plans, and assessments, data gathering, analyses, synthesis and interpretation of results as well as validation and reporting. The overall output of this component will be the publication of the State of Marine Environment Report for the Ghanaian coast.
• Marine Spatial Planning: stakeholder mapping, procurement of equipment and logistics, defining and analyzing existing and future conditions and state of the coastal and marine environment, preparing a spatial plan and subjecting the spatial plan to a Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). A summary of the key points can be read in the Marine Spatial Planning Policy Brief.

Partners

In addition to the Mami Wata implementing partners, GRID-Arendal and the Abidjan Convention (ABC) Secretariat, several collaborative Institutions are playing a key role in the project implementation. These include:

• The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of Ghana
• The Land Use and Spatial Planning Authority (formerly Town and Country Planning Department)
• The Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences – University of Ghana
• The Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Science – University of Cape Coast
• The Fisheries Commission
• The Ghana Maritime Authority
• The National Development Planning Commission
• The National Petroleum Authority